T.G. "Cowboy" Edwards and Soi Cowboy, Bangkok

The Bangkok bar street named after one man: T.G. "Cowboy" Edwards, a tall, retired African-American airman in a cowboy hat who opened a bar there in 1977.

Soi Cowboy is a short lane of go-go bars between Sukhumvit Soi 21 and 23 in Bangkok. It is named after a person. Wikipedia and the Nation (Thailand) both trace the name to T.G. "Cowboy" Edwards, a retired American airman who opened a bar there in 1977. Local histories describe him as "a tall African-American" who got his nickname because he often wore a cowboy hat. The Bangkok Post nightlife columnist Bernard Trink started calling the lane after him, and the name stuck.

He was not the first. Before Cowboy, the lane was known as Soi Gold Label, after a bar that opened in about 1975. Edwards's bar was the second on the lane, and the street grew from there. It had 31 bars by the end of the twentieth century and more than 40 today. By the 1990s the Nation counted it with Patpong and Nana Plaza as one of Bangkok's three main nightlife areas.

This archive includes the street because of the man, not the trade. An American, and by most accounts a Black American, left the military for Thailand, and his nickname became a place name that has lasted almost fifty years. It is the earliest documented case in this archive of an American hustler's name fixed permanently on a map abroad. Compare Roadie Mack, who built an international name as a player, and see also Young Dope Man.

ALSO KNOWN AS
Published only as T.G. Edwards

BORN
United States (birthplace not published)

STATUS
Not established

ERA
1977 (bar opens) to the present (the street)

ASSOCIATED WITH
Bangkok (Sukhumvit Soi 23); Bernard Trink (Bangkok Post); Nana Plaza; Patpong

STANDING
Documented